White House Watch: May 10, 2009 - May 16, 2009

I'm taking Friday off. Blogging will resume Monday morning. I've been amazed at how little media pickup there's been of the revalation by the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that the White House started pushing the use of torture...

Shailagh Murray writes in The Washington Post: "President Obama told senators at a White House meeting yesterday that he would review names of potential Supreme Court nominees over the weekend, leading participants to believe an announcement could come within days,...

In his commencement address at Arizona State University, President Obama last night made repeated cracks about the university's controversial decision not to grant him an honorary degree. A university spokesman at one point had said that Obama had not established...

In trying to explain his startling decision to oppose the public release of more photos depicting detainee abuse, President Obama and his aides yesterday put forth six excuses for his about-face, one more flawed than the next. First, there was...

President Obama's about-face on the release of more photos depicting detainee abuse is a colossal mistake. The president who came into office promising to restore our international reputation and return responsibility to government now seems to be buying into the...

It's kind of ironic that empathy may turn out to be one of the most contentious topics in modern American politics. But empathy is at the very core of President Obama's political philosophy. And -- as seen in the response...

David Leonhardt writes in the New York Times: "The events of the last few weeks have raised the odds that a health care overhaul will really happen this year." But, he writes, there's still the matter of a missing $90...

The release of the latest official status report on the Social Security and Medicare trust funds -- which unsurprisingly finds that both are suffering somewhat due to the recession -- has spawned the predictable headlines of doom. After all, the...

U.S. soldiers (including one still in boxer shorts) come under fire from the Taliban yesterday in northeastern Afghanistan. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder) President Obama still doesn't have an exit strategy for Afghanistan. The benchmarks he promised over six weeks ago are...

Robert Pear writes in the New York Times: "President Obama engineered a political coup on Monday by bringing leaders of the health care industry to the White House to build momentum for his ambitious health care agenda....For the health care...

Catching you up on the torture beat: R. Jeffrey Smith wrote in Sunday's Washington Post that Senate intelligence committee investigators are looking into whether CIA interrogators working in secret prisons exceeded their instructions from the Justice Department. "The issue has...

Lydia Saad reports for Gallup: "President Barack Obama appears to be slightly more popular with Americans at the start of his second 100 days in office than he was, on average, during his first 100. Gallup Poll Daily tracking from...

If torture saved American lives, was it worth it? That, with the words "enhanced interrogation" instead of torture, is the question former vice president Dick Cheney wants people considering when the subject of the Bush-era interrogation practices comes up. Cheney...

President Obama's speech to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday night was full of delightfully deflating zingers in which Obama gently mocked his reputation, his top aides -- and his political opponents. Here's the full text. When...